The Indiependent sits down for a chat with the double Palme d’Or winning directors Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, whose latest refugee drama Tori and Lokita, is arguably their most urgent and heart-shattering glare into reality yet. The Belgian director duo discuss the behind the scenes of their filmmaking and why they “didn’t want to fall into the trap of a good plot.”
The Dardenne brothers’ Cannes prize-winner – about the plight of Tori (Pablo Schils), who has his residence papers, and Lokita (Joely Mbundu) who is without – is a shattering insight into the impact of a universally hostile environment. But despite the brutality rooted in the topic, the story of two young migrants also sprouts into a beautiful tale of friendship and adolescence.
You’ve explored the topic of immigration in your previous work, specifically exposing the gruesome reality of it in The Promise (1996). What was the origin or inspiration for Tori and Lokita’s story?
Jean-Pierre Dardenne: Ten years ago, we began a script with three characters – a mother and two children who came from Africa. The mother had to go back but before she was deported she told the children to go to the police and say, “you are children without parents” and she tells her children, “stay together the whole time if you want to survive. If you want to live, stay together.” And then we stopped writing the script.
But about two or three years ago, we read in a Belgium newspaper that there’s a lot of children or unaccompanied minors disappearing, not just in Belgium but in a lot of different countries in Europe, and nobody knows what’s happening to them. So we thought it’s not normal for our countries to have so many children disappearing without an answer or consequences and we wanted to bring attention to that.
Your films are always grounded in a raw realism. The film unveils the sinister underbelly of the sex trafficking and cannabis industry. How did you manage to carry out this research accurately?
Luc Dardenne: We did a lot of research by reading of course. But it just so happens that we have two people who we know well, who are inspectors and work in the police in Belgium, and have already helped us with information on previous films. So they explained to us, for example, how a plantation was shaped and how it was done because it was important for us to imagine it accurately in the script.
We needed to know how exactly a cannabis plantation was made with the different levels and compartments of that factory like the air vents.
With this information the inspectors helped us with, though we did modify some of it to make it work, in terms of the movement – like when Tori gets in and makes his way through the maze of interior and exterior corridors, everything came together nicely.
Technically, it is very complicated. There’s an abandoned building which is constructed with all the different layers, levels, corridors and, very importantly, sound insulation and something to stop the heat from escaping – a lot of technical stuff. And so our inspectors showed us many photographs and our designer was able to go and see a place that had been seized by the police to be able to construct the set properly. With all this information and research, though we did modify some of it to make it work on screen, in terms of the character’s movement throughout the maze of interior and exterior corridors, everything came together nicely.
Wow, and that’s just research for production design.
LD: Yes, and then we learned information on how to plant and grow cannabis. You have the young plants and then as they grow bigger and higher, they move to a different room for the next level and then you have the drying room et cetera. You don’t need all the information for this but you can imagine how much goes into it.
And details like with the mobile phone problem. That was something that the police told us about. You have 30 seconds before a call is traceable by the police. And they also told us that in Belgium, at the time of the film, production of cannabis is really led by Dutch people working with Albanian mafia because in Holland they have legalisation to consume but not for production – stuff like that.
In the opening interrogation scene, the camera refuses to comfort the viewer as it remains glued on Lokita and we’re placed in the cold and unsympathetic shoes of the immigration officer. Can you talk about the choice of framing and camerawork and how this plays into compliance?
JD: We tried different things but what you see is what we pretty much just worked on. So this shot that you see in the film at the start, it seemed to us that, at the beginning anyway, the voice of the state would be off camera and we would focus the whole scene on Lokita. Focusing on her face, her emotions, her gaze and forcing us to focus on her. Also, the length of that shot would be the length of the actual interrogation. And the fact that she’s actually imprisoned in this frame, and throughout the film we discover that Lokita is to some extent the prisoner and Tori tries to free her.
LD: It’s sort of the matrix plan of the film, that she’s there as a prisoner and Tori is there trying to save her.
Yeah, even though it’s a heavy subject matter, there’s still this juvenile aspect of a young Tori embarking on this big adventure, treating it almost like a game.
LD: Yes, yes it is. It is playful, it is an adventure for him. And then there’s the contrast of Lokita, who’s more of a film noir. She’s got the men’s gaze on her. The fact that she hasn’t got any of her papers so there’s the brutality and the violence of the men and the violence of the administration. And she has to fight against that and sometimes she takes so many blows, and she endures it.
So the difference between her body, which is just enduring and falling sometimes, is in contrast with Tori who is so full of energy and able to weave his way in and out of holes and around. In a way his movement is going to create life for Lokita. But he is naive in that his solutions are very childlike and childish. At the end of the fourth striptease, when she says, “I wish my mum was here,” and he responds, “but I’m here” and then he puts his hand on her. It’s very beautiful but he’s also a child. Their friendship is more fragile than reality but more beautiful.
You’ve said in previous interviews that you’re not politicians. But media and film and art do play a large role in how society perceives these issues. How do you tackle this sense of responsibility without attaching a political agenda to it or has your approach to storytelling changed?
JD: It’s true that this film has an aspect of denunciation and accusation specifically in the speech Tori makes at the end of the film. And it’s there in the mechanism of the film which leads to this denunciation. And it all led to this all because she didn’t have her papers. And yet they have such a simple dream. She wants to work, he wants to go to school, and they want to be able to have a little flat together and that’s a normal dream. And the ending is there to say what shouldn’t have happened.
Did you ever consider a different ending for Tori and Lokita or was it always going to end how it did?
LD: No, it was always going to end that way.
In your films, particularly Young Ahmed and Two Days, One Night, the characters are a lot more morally ambiguous. Whereas with Tori and Lokita, it’s very black and white with whether each character is good or bad. Why is this?
LD: Yes absolutely. There’s the idea of a bit of a tale, a bit of a fairy tale and story tale. The adults are all the ogres to some extent. It was difficult to imagine a betrayal in their friendship because it could have happened. Tori could have gone with Betim, into this underground crime thing and just dropped Lokita. But for us, we didn’t want to fall into the trap of a good plot. We preferred to keep the friendship there throughout, resisting the horrible and harsh reality. And because the reality is so gruesome, it makes sense to keep that friendship. And keep the good guys on the good side and the baddies on their side.
JD: And there’s the element with the plantation where you can kind of link it to a castle where Lokita, as a princess, is locked up and Tori, as a prince, goes to save her.
I love that.
LD: It’s got aspects of a fairy tale. But a cruel version, the original version of fairy tales like Cinderella. Originally, when Cinderella put her foot in the slipper she cut her foot and, also, the sisters cut off their toes to try and fit in the shoe. There was a lot of blood in the Brothers Grimm versions.
Until Disney got their hands on them.
Both: No, no, no, no, not them.
A chat for another day.
TORI AND LOKITA is exclusively in cinemas from 2 December. The Dardenne Brothers will be doing Q&A screenings in London and Brighton over the opening weekend, information about which can be found here www.toriandlokita.film
Interview by Alexandria Slater
Support The Indiependent
We’re trying to raise £200 a month to help cover our operational costs. This includes our ‘Writer of the Month’ awards, where we recognise the amazing work produced by our contributor team. If you’ve enjoyed reading our site, we’d really appreciate it if you could donate to The Indiependent. Whether you can give £1 or £10, you’d be making a huge difference to our small team.